Planning for Upcoming Voice Chats on DeWitt's Epicurus and His Philosophy

Shall we start planning for another Discordapp discussion of the next chapter of DeWitt's book? I think the last time we talked we discussed skipping over several of the "life of" chapters and going straight to the meatier chapters, probably the next one of which is Chapter 6 - Sensations, Anticipations and Reason. How about either the 14th or the 21st? Leave comments and we'll pick one.

Looks like at this point we better plan for April 21st. I'll put up a notice at the top of the EF page, and also post to Facebook in a couple of days. The "announcement" at the top of the page has now been added, and I will add a Facebook notice next week. In the meantime let me say this: We can make a pragmatic judgment call on how many people we need to indicate that they will attend before we schedule, and if we need to do so we'll postpone til we have more. But if we do, it will be just that - a postponement - because while we may be delayed, we will persevere until we have the numbers to go forward!

Yes. Elli is out for now, and I feel like Ilkka is really stressed to make it, and Martin is traveling, so we should probably now focus on a time that works for the Western Hemisphere. Of course that would then primarily mean you, me, Eric, Julie, and Jason (if he is available). However it might not be a bad thing for us to work together more closely, and perhaps record one of these sessions to make into a podcast.

Given what appears to be the declining importance of Facebook, I have put back up the Google Adwords advertisementpasted-from-clipboard.png that I experimented with earlier. I think even a brief introductory podcast made from one of our sessions would be helpful for getting the word out on a place for positive discussions of Epicurus. (I say "positive discussions" because I can frankly do without those who want to asset that"absence of pain" divorced from pleasure is the full meaning of life). More material in which we highlight the other aspects of Epicurean philosophy (aspects which combine to make that interpretation absurd) are probably the best way forward.

I especially think that single page graphical memes which can be circulated on Twitter and similar places are probably a good place to start.

Isn't it probably safe to say that the main goal of this forum is to bring us into contact with more people who have the same general approach to life that we have? If so, lots of discussion should always center around how we go about expressing the core principles in easy-to-grasp form.

Let's go ahead and pull the trigger and set this for 6 pm EST on Saturday. I'll sign on and be there no matter what. If we have enough people to proceed we'll do so, and if not we'll just chat about plans for moving forward. I am thinking 6 pm EST is consistent with Brett's 3-5 pm (given time zone issues) but if that doesn't work let's adjust the time to fit the most people. We probably won't have a large number this time, so we can work to accommodate those who can attend.

I have set up a separate forum for the Book Discussion project, and set up a separate thread for each of the first six chapters. I also prepared an outline for Chapter 6 - here: Discussion Plan For Chapter 06

I will go back and look for the outlines that other people prepared for the earlier chapters. If anyone has ready access to those and wants to post them in the respective thread, feel free! thanks!

Today we had five in attendance and another good discussion. Let's start planning the next meeting. As Alex suggested we need not wait a month - how about Saturday May 5 at 5:00 PM EDT? Please post whether that will work for you and we'll announce an official plan once we have several indicate that that works for them.

(Sorry Alex I did not see your question about the link til now. I'll keep a link posted in the announcement box at the top of the forum.)

Based on Alex's and JAWS's comments it looks like it makes the most sense to plan for either May 5 or May 12, with the probability that May 5 is probably the better of the two. Please comment on your preference, and in the meantime I will update the main announcement.

We had an excellent discussion tonight so let's start planning for the next one. How does 5PM on Saturday May 19 look. I seem to recall that JAWS may be out of town, but otherwise let's consider that date - let me know what you think.

Rescheduling the next chat: It looks like I did not ever post a notice at Facebook, or in this thread, and since it looks like one of the regulars (Martin) is out of town, I will change the notice on the front page to postpone the next chat until later in July. I suspect that here in the USA there is a lot of dislocation due to the July 4 holiday week as well.